Virginia Woolf: Two Dinners, one at a Womens College(II) and one at a Mens College(I):

In the following two passages, Virginia Woolf describes two different meals that she was served during a university visit; the first meal
was served at the mens college (I), while the second meal (II) was served at the womens college. Read the two passages carefully.
Then, in a well written essay, analyze how Woolf uses rhetorical strategies to characterize each meal and what she implies by these
strategies.
I
II
It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us
believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for

Here was my soup. Dinner was being served in the great

something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that

dining-hall. Far from being spring it was in fact an evening in

was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten. It is

October. Everybody was assembled in the big dining- room. Dinner

part of the novelists convention not to mention soup and salmon

was ready. Here was the soup. It was a plain gravy soup. There

and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings wee of no

was nothing to stir the fancy in that. One could have seen through

importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank

the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have been on

a glass of wine. Here, however, I shall take the liberty to defy that

the plate itself. But there was no pattern. The plate was plain. Next

convention and to tell you that the lunch on this occasion began

came beef with its attendant greens and potatoesa homely

with soles, sunk in a deep dish, over which the college cook had

trinity, suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy market, and

spread a counterpane of the whitest cream, save that it was

sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge, and bargaining and

branded here and there with brown spots like spots on the flanks

cheapening, and women with string bags on Monday morning.

of a doe. After that came the partridges, but if this suggests a

There was no reason to complain of human natures daily food,

couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. The

seeing that the supply was sufficient and coal-miners doubtless

partridges, many and various, came with all their retinue of sauces

were sitting down less. Prunes and custard followed. And if any

and salads, the sharp and the sweet, each in its order; their

one complains that prunes, even when mitigated by custard, are

potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as

an uncharitable vegetable (fruit they are not), stringy as a misers

rosebuds but more succulent. And no sooner had the roast and its

heart and exuding a fluid such as might run in misers veins who

retinue been done with than the silent serving-man, and the

have denied themselves wine and warmth for eighty years and yet

Beadle himself perhaps in a milder manifestation, set before us,

not given to the poor, he should reflect that there are people whose

wreathed in napkins, a confection which rose all sugar from the

charity embraces even the prune. Biscuits and cheese came next,

waves. To call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would

and here the water-jug was liberally passed round, for it is the

be an insult. Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and

nature of biscuits to be dry, and these were biscuits to the core.

flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by

That was all. The meal was over. Everybody scraped their chairs

degrees was lit, halfway down the spine, which is the seat of the

back; the swing-doors swung violently to and fro; soon the hall was

soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it

emptied of every sign of food and made ready no doubt for

pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, ,subtle and

breakfast next morning.

subterranean glow, which is the rich yellow flame of rational

intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be
anybody but oneself. We are all going to heavenin other words,
how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this
grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society
of ones kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the
cushions in the window-seat.